A judge denied a request to exhume the remains of a stillborn fetus found in a Gary funeral home to do DNA testing.

Wyatt Puryear filed a lawsuit after his stillborn son, Marcus Puryear, who he thought had been buried in 1996, was found in 2012 at Smith, Bizzell and Warner Funeral Home in Gary. After the discovery, the fetus “was finally laid to rest” in June 2015, court records show.

Attorneys representing the funeral home filed a motion to exhume Marcus Puryear and to conduct DNA testing to ensure Wyatt Puryear and and Marcus Puryear were, in fact, father and son.

Lake Superior Judge Bruce Parent heard arguments last month over the request and issued his decision Wednesday in an order filed in court records.

The funeral home provided “nothing more than speculation in an attempt to rebut the presumption that Puryear was the father of the child,” Parent concluded.

In his order, Parent denied both requests to exhume the remains and to do DNA testing.

Attorney Kevin Smith, who represents Wyatt Puryear, called it a “ghoulish request” and said that his client’s paternity had never been questioned by attorneys, the mother or any other potential fathers until now.

It was the funeral home who first contacted Wyatt Puryear to inform him about the remains that were found which “they told him was his child,” Smith said.

Wyatt Puryear said he paid Smith, Bizzell and Warner Funeral Home to bury the remains, and he attended a service at a cemetery in which he thought the remains were buried, court records state.

In 2012, an employee found two fetal remains at the funeral home. Original reports indicated the remains were found in the ceiling, but court records said they may instead have been in a cabinet.

One of the remains had a Methodist Hospitals morgue tag with the mother’s name and date, among other information, on it, court records state, which was identified as Marcus Puryear.

The funeral home worked “for several months” with the Lake County coroner’s office “on the final disposition of the fetal remains,” which were eventually turned over to coroner’s office in 2015, according to a report in court records.

Wyatt Puryear was notified by the funeral home in March 2015, and he filed a lawsuit, claiming negligence.

Indiana law “provides that a man is presumed to be a child’s biological father if the man and the child’s mother are or have been married to each other, and the child was born during the marriage or not later than 300 days after the marriage is terminated,” Parent said in his order.

Wyatt Puryear and the boy’s mother were going through divorce proceedings at the time of Marcus Puryear’s stillbirth, court records show.

Attorney Jonathan Slagh, who represented E.R.W. Enterprises Inc. and LSC Indiana Corp. for the funeral home during arguments, said the parents were not living together at the time, which he said called into question the boy’s paternity.

Parent disagreed, though, and said the funeral home “improperly placed the burden upon Puryear to establish paternity of the stillborn child.”

The case is scheduled to go to trial in May, with a final pretrial conference April 29, court records show.

“Mediation has been attempted in this case twice and has not been successful, thus it appears that this case will only be resolved at trial,” court records state.